Bionetics Project Engineer William McLamb examines a petri dish containing C. elegans nemotodes worms.

Bionetics Project Engineer William McLamb examines a petri dish containing C. elegans nemotodes (round worms). These specimens were found in a Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC) container, a middeck experiment that was among the Columbia debris recovered in East Texas. The worms are descendants of those that were part of an experiment that flew on Columbia's last mission, STS-107. The experiment was designed to verify a new synthetic nutrient solution for an International Space Station (ISS) "model" specimen planned to be used extensively for ISS gene expression studies and was sponsored by the NASA Ames Research Center. Scientists are now looking over the experiment at KSC to determine if it will yield any scientific results. The investigation into the cause of the Columbia accident is ongoing.